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Biden Dismisses Calls to Drop Out Weeks Before Convention; Investigators Trace Shooter's Pre-Rally Movements; Computer Outage Hit Businesses Worldwide. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired July 20, 2024 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[04:30:43]

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to our viewers in the United States and in Canada. I'm Fred Pleitgen. And you are watching CNN NEWSROOM.

U.S. President Joe Biden says he is ready to hit the campaign trailer next week once he recovers from COVID. And, of course, he's ignoring calls from members of his own party to drop out of the race. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers are now publicly urging Mr. Biden to step aside. And that includes a dozen new names on Friday alone.

A source says the President is, quote, "seething" at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi since some of her close allies are now joining those calls as well.

So what could happen if Democrats had to replace President Biden on the ballot just weeks before their convention? CNN's Brian Todd has the details.

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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president's team digging in, vowing to stay in the race despite dozens of Democratic lawmakers and party leaders suggesting otherwise. But if Joe Biden, in the days or weeks ahead, were to decide to quit the race before the Democratic convention in late August, the process for replacing him is uncertain and somewhat messy.

PROF. LARRY SABATO, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: The primaries are over, the caucuses are over. You can't redo the primaries or caucuses. You can't elect new delegates.

TODD: If Biden steps decide before the convention, it could turn the convention itself into a free-for-all, or at least make it full of intrigue. Names of replacements could be put forward and the roughly 3900 Democratic delegates from across the country could decide who to vote for as the nominee.

SABATO: It's up to the delegates. In the end, it's up to them. TODD: President Biden won almost all of those 3900 delegates in the primaries. But does he have control over who they support if he's out of the race?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It's not like Joe Biden can say, OK, I'm stepping down. All of you delegates that signed on for me half to now support this other candidate. That's not how it works. Those delegates would essentially be free to move the way they want.

TODD: Like the days of old, backroom deals and lobbying could prevail at the convention as potential nominees tried to convince the delegates to get behind them. In the end, how many of the 3900 delegates would a candidate have to win at the convention to get the nomination?

ELAINE KAMARCK, MEMBER, DNC RULES AND BYLAWS COMMITTEE: Ultimately, they would have to convince somewhat somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 plus Democratic delegates to vote for them on a roll call vote.

TODD: There are also additional so-called superdelegates. About 700 of them comprised of party insiders and elected officials who could also be allowed to join in the voting. It would all mean a late start for any candidate, including in the money race.

If Vice President Kamala Harris won the nomination, she would presumably be able to use Biden's campaign war chest because her name is on all the filings. But any other candidate may have to raise their own money.

(On camera): What happens if President Biden, for some reason, leaves the race after the Democratic convention? Experts say in that unlikely event, the Democratic National Committee would convene and select the Democratic nominee for president on its own.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

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PLEITGEN: And fresh off the Republican National Convention where he, of course, accepted the presidential nomination, Donald Trump is heading back on the campaign trail. New data shows an average of about 25 million people watched Trump's acceptance speech on Thursday night. That's down 21% from 2016, but a slight increase over his speech in 2020.

Later today, the former president and his vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, plan to hold their first joint rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This will be Trump's first rally since last weekend when a bullet grazed his ear in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

We're also learning more about the pre-rally movements of would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, though his motive for carrying out the shooting is still no clearer.

CNN's Kyung Lah has the details.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hours before the attempted assassination, Thomas Crooks begins his days scoping out the rally site, sources tell CNN.

He arrives mid-morning and stays for 70 minutes and drives more than an hour back home where he picks up an AR-type rifle, his father later tells authorities he thought Crooks was going to the shooting range.

Crooks buys ammunition at a local gun shop and travels back to the rally site, 5:10 p.m. local police first spot Crooks. Around the same time, he's seen in this video obtained by CNN affiliate WTAE walking outside the perimeter of the rally in front of the building he would later climb.

[04:35:15]

At 5:33 p.m., the motorcade for former President Donald Trump arrives as the eager crowd awaits. About 15 minutes later, Pennsylvania state police notified the Secret Service of a suspicious person and share a photo of Crooks, counter snipers are alerted, according to a congressional briefing by law enforcement. But officers lose sight of him.

Moments before Trump walks out. Counter snipers can be seen facing opposite directions. Trump takes the stage at 6:02 p.m. his team was not informed of the suspicious sighting.

Two minutes before the first shot, the counter-sniper on the building closest to the shooters location, adjusts his position.

On the ground outside the perimeter, people start reacting a movement on the roof of a nearby building. A uniformed officer can be seen walking toward the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, someone's on top of the roof. Look. There he is right there. Right there. See him? He's laying down.

LAH: About ten seconds later, a separate counter sniper team on the southern building turns around 180 degrees to face the shooter's building.

In the ground, people alert law enforcement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's on the roof, right here, right on the roof.

LAH: Seconds later, another video shows an officer walking backwards, apparently looking up, a man approaches and points to the shooter's location. The officer turns and walks out of frame.

At the same time to counter sniper teams are captured in these photos aiming and the direction of the shooter.

Realizing the danger, the crowd outside the perimeter starts rushing away.

On the other side of the field, a counter-sniper can be seen peering through his scope at the direction of the building where the shooter is.

Shots are fired at 6:11 p.m. Trump is injured. The gunman is taken out seconds later. On his body, law enforcement find a remote transmitter to detonate close-ups that were later discovered in his car, along with a drone, the tactical vest, and more ammo.

(On camera): Investigators also found the shooter's cell phone on his body. It had a screenshot of the live stream of the rally. It was taken 10 minutes before the shooting.

And the search history of the cell phone showed that he had looked up articles about prominent U.S. politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

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PLEITGEN: And after the break, chaos and confusion at airports around the world. How soon will things return to normal after the global tech outage? More on that coming up.

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PLEITGEN: All right, returning now to one of our top stories. Some airlines, hospitals, and banks are still working to recover after Friday's massive tech outage. Nearly 800 U.S. flights have already been canceled for Saturday alone, though United Airlines says most of its systems have now recovered. CNN's Jason Carroll has more on what happened and how it affected people around the world.

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JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was the blue screen that had customers from critical industries worldwide seeing red.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm so upset right now. There are eight people in my party. Eight people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's 13 in ours.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: $456 a ticket, and they're giving me a hundred dollars back. That is it. And we're screwed. This man is getting married.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anxiety. When I walked in, I got straight anxiety with all these people. Because I was online, I couldn't find my flight. I was like, did I do something wrong?

CARROLL (voice-over): Anger at airports in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe as major carriers struggled to deal with the fallout of what had happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's been really wild. It's crazy. It's crowded. People cursing, yelling.

CARROLL (voice-over): The chaos went far beyond air travel. 911 services taking a hit in jurisdictions across the country, impacting Arizona and Alaska. The outage having a sweeping impact throughout the day. UPS and Federal Express warning of delays.

The Social Security Administration closed some of its offices, while motor vehicle departments in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had service interruptions.

Even the Department of Justice was impacted, and President Biden was briefed on the unfolding situation. Around the world, confusion at international banks as some financial systems were impacted. Disruptions at United Kingdom's National Health System, as well as broadcast networks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And a major global IT outage, largest companies, including us here at Sky News.

CARROLL (voice-over): All global technical outage linked to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity provider. The company's CEO apologized for the incident, saying it was not a cyberattack but a defect in a software update CrowdStrike was doing that crashed Microsoft Windows causing the outage. He also says a fix has been deployed.

GEORGE KURTZ, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CROWDSTRIKE; We've been on, you know, with our customers all night and working with them. Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational because of, you know, we fixed it on our end.

CARROLL (voice-over): It's still not over. The Department of Homeland Security is working with CrowdStrike and Microsoft to fully assess and address system outages.

(On-camera): And the cancellations continued throughout the day into the early evening here at Newark Airport on Friday. CrowdStrike's CEO says that it will be a lengthy process before things get back to normal. He also offered full transparency into how all of this happened and says that the company will take steps to try and make sure something like this does not happen again.

Jason Carroll, CNN, Newark.

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PLEITGEN: Jake Moore joins us now live from Wimborne in England. He is a Global Security Advisor. And, Jake, I've been looking forward to speaking to you because the question that's on everybody's mind is how on earth could something like this happen? We all thought that there were firewalls, backup systems, something that would stop something like this from getting out of hand.

JAKE MOORE, GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY ADVISER, ESET: Yeah, it's a great question. And it comes down to updates. Now, our phones, our computers, they always need updating.

We probably get them weekly or monthly. And some people might even find them a bit of a pain, but they're so vital in keeping those devices safe. And so what CrowdStrike have done here is created this update, which is sent out to all of those Windows machines all over the world.

[04:45:03]

But that update was unfortunately faulty. It just had this critical error inside it. Maybe it wasn't tested fully enough. We don't really know exactly why it was given away without all that extra process involved. And it's just knocked over about quarter of the world's computers. And that just goes to say that this testing process is so vital in making sure this doesn't happen.

PLEITGEN: So do you think that, or does it appear as though CrowdStrike got complacent, CrowdStrike wasn't accurate enough? What do you think caused this to get so out of hand?

MOORE: Well, I don't think we know yet. We may never know. It could be a whole host of different issues. So it could be human error. It may be the fact that the testing looked OK in the test environment and wasn't fully tested on all those different versions of machines, or just something went vitally wrong. And this is just the problem that we have with computers. Things can go wrong.

We've never seen anything like this on such a global scale, but I'm sure we will learn from this. And all the other companies that have to push out these updates, which are so valuable, will also be learning this as well.

PLEITGEN: Why do you think it's -- it's taking so long to get things back on track? Because you would think that if this was some sort of security update or something, you just send out a new update and everything's fine, right?

MOORE: Yeah, that's it. That would be what would normally happen if the computer is normally running. So say an update goes out and there was a mistake with it, but the computer still looks normal and opens up in Windows, then you would just get another update sent out, and that would be done instantly, pretty much.

The problem here is we've seen computers go to this blue screen of death, which is this critical error, which is what you see on the screen, and it just says it can't work unless it goes into what's called safe mode. And that's a manual process.

So we're looking at all of these computers needing people at the computer to actually run it in this particular safe mode, then send out the fix, which is available, but it has to be put through this process and then restart it again. So it will take a long time, possibly days until we see these computers back up and running.

PLEITGEN: Yeah, and that, of course, is on top of all the schedules, for instance, for airlines and hospitals and other places that need to get back on track as well. What do you think should be and maybe are some of the lessons learned in all this, not just for CrowdStrike, but of course also from the companies that employ their software, like, for instance, Microsoft and others as well?

MOORE: So yeah, this comes down to further testing and making sure things really are secure before they're released into the wild, as we say. But what happens is it's about speed. So there may have been a critical threat which CrowdStrike were aware of.

And this happens with all cybersecurity companies. They're researching new threats all the time. And as soon as they locate one, they find the antidote and then send out this patch and say, right, install this, and you should therefore be safe.

So it's about speed to make sure those computers are then safe from not being attacked by this. But of course, they want to make sure that update is secure and it actually works and functions properly. So it's that testing phase, but the speed as well.

This balance is so difficult, and unfortunately it went wrong here. But -- so usually it doesn't go wrong, and it's so quick and easy usually to get these updates out to all the computers around the world.

PLEITGEN: Were you also a bit surprised at how something like this could essentially derail, as you put it, about a quarter of the world's computer systems?

MOORE: Yeah, I mean, it does go to show how much we rely on these, say, particular systems. I think most of the world is still relying on Windows, and that's why threat actors, so cyber criminals, they do tend to target particular versions of operating systems, so in this case, Windows. But also we rely on them to make sure they're working.

So if we are using Windows in such a vast capacity, when it goes wrong, it all goes wrong very badly, and it's difficult to get different operating systems, say you've got Windows and then an Apple machine, to work together. So you tend to choose one. You stick with that. But of course, like we've seen here, as soon as that falls over, it can have catastrophic effects.

PLEITGEN: I want to talk to you about something that -- that I think really caused a lot of concern for a lot of consumers, a lot of people, really, around the world, because our lives are also, of course, becoming more and more digital. Very few of us still actually use cash, at least in parts of the world we think we can order everything. Do you have any sort of advice to people as to what to do when all this goes down, or if it goes down?

MOORE: Yeah. I mean, this is tough for me, because I'm a real advocate for technology, and I'm trying to, say, advise people that we are going to be OK with moving into digital currencies and using our phone, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all these wonderful, easy things that make our lives more efficient. And I'm one for getting rid of cash.

[04:50:05]

But of course, this has just put us back a few steps, and that's going to be a bit of an issue for us to clear up and make people have faith in the system again. But hopefully, as this has now happened, it shouldn't happen again. We've seen outages before, but not like this.

And so I'm pretty sure that this is going to be the one lesson that we all learn from. But I think it will take time before people trust it again, but give it a couple of years. I think we are moving in the right direction. This is just one of those big hiccups that is probably inevitable in the -- in the world of technology.

PLEITGEN: Yep. A glitch, as they say. Jake Moore, thank you very much.

And good things come in pairs, as the old Chinese proverb goes. When we come back, we'll tell you about the giant panda duo that's just weeks away from making their long-awaited debut. That's coming up.

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PLEITGEN: Welcome back. Do you enjoy the sounds of nature? How about singing ice in Chile? Listen to this.

[04:55:04]

Pretty eerie, isn't it? You've been listening to sounds from what has been dubbed a quote, singing lake. The spooky noise comes from the movement and cracking of ice on frozen water. This is a natural phenomenon in Europe and North America, but it's not common in Chile. That's because there aren't many lakes in the country that can sustain low temperatures for long enough.

Moving along now, and there's no less than a week now, less than a week to go before the start of the Paris Summer Olympics, and CNN is counting down the seconds to the big party with the Eiffel Tower decked out in Olympic rings and the mayor of Paris having a swim in the sand to show how safe it is.

The city is ready to declare itself open for competition, compelling stories and a communal experience with the rest of the world.

Let's take a listen to Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the opening ceremony, which will take place not in a stadium, but next to and on the river.

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THOMAS JOLLY, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, PARIS 2024 OPENING CEREMONY (through translator): We will not follow the usual structure of the ceremonies for a great celebration, which will highlight our shared humanity, this great us that we are. That is to say, us here in Paris, us in France, us in Europe, but also us in the world.

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PLEITGEN: Mark your calendars, folks. The San Diego Zoo's new giant panda pair will make their official debut on August 8th. Four-year-old Yun Chuan and three-year-old Xin Bao arrived in San Diego last month on loan from China.

Teams from both countries are monitoring them to make sure they're adjusting well. The two pandas are the first to enter the U.S. in 21 years. China's been loaning the creatures to other countries for decades under a program sometimes referred to as, quote, "panda diplomacy."

And I am Fred Pleitgen. Thanks for your company. I'll be back in just a few moments with more CNN NEWSROOM.

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